So where are the financial figures to support your claim? Asking for a friend.
Elite Dangerous plans for 2024
- Thread starter Arubeto
- Start date
There’s nothing unreasonable or unrealistic about ship interiors, which can be brought into the game gradually and don’t require a major overhaul of the game engine. The game has to be continuously developed if frontier wants it to continue
respectfully, do you have any experience in this? i guess i could call myself a small indie dev and even i know how many things can break with the littlest of additions. elite is already a flying spaghetti monster. we dont need more sauce, we need toothpicks.
if frontier wants elite to continue imo the smartest way would be slow closure of current storyline, balancing of the deepest core systems and slow introduction of long term end of life mode, lets say 10 years, to develop games next iteration.
i dont think we should put more sauce on the spaghetti only to find we have too much sauce; then adding more spaghetti only to find out we have too much spaghetti; so we put more sauce... and more spaghetti... more sauce... at some point you need to realise that you need to take out the trash.
its not that long ago that fdev released a list of issues as "unresolvable". long time bugs that they cant fix. amongst a great amount of bugs already existing and needing a fix, with a new plethora of problems appearing (and as a bonus some old ones resurfacing) with every addition to the game... there are experience breaking bugs on every step and you want to add a flight of stairs. we have all grown accustomed to the games quirks for the better or worse, but it is a real issue. and from developers stance i would most probable rather go wait tables (or make a new one from scratch) rather than try to fix the unfixable.
tldr
unrealistic
Well, one thing its for sure that will be added. The cosmetics - with occasional ship kits. So far its only thing that is guaranteed to be added, yet still a lot of these are half-baked and feel like being cheaply made.
On other hand, given Frontier approach to the matter, its safe to say thats is bit unrealistic to expect something that would require more than barebone maintenance from them, especially if they themselfs, said that they dont see much of point to add interiors for thier game (kinda valid excuse - ideal to cover simple laziness & ignorace), despite it being one of most asked features to be added, exacly for reasons that you did mention. It should not require drastic changes to game itself, but only some time and manpower. They lack both, obviously.
More like, they rather focus on new "exciting" projects, wich again, takes away much of needed crew capacity that Elite needs just to be functional (not a buggy mess each update), in order to push out an update, that would not break more things that added features.
Frontier did one big mistake - instead of focusing on Elite and Elite only from very start (thanks to Elite its why they got into market in first place - I doubt they would get that much kickstarter backers if they would announce thier zoo instead of elite..) wich was supposed to be thier core genre, soon after horizons launch they decited to "expand" and waste resources, well as development time for other games wich all so far - failed. Instead of these all failures they decide to focus on, if all that effort would went into Elite, we might even had already well-polished game, with very litte of bugs, with tons of ships, interiors, even earth-likes to that point. 10 years its a lot to focus on single game.
Source for that post please?
"Odyssey DLC didn't go as expected": Frontier wrote off a 7 million loss on it as unrecoverable - https://otp.tools.investis.com/clie...regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1594040 - also noted in various other TNS bulletins and annual accounts that sales had been below expectations.
"Other games have been financial disasters": 'disasters' might be a bit overstated but they've not been profitable yet. F1 2022, F1 2023 and Realms of Ruin have all sold "below expectations" - example for RoR at https://otp.tools.investis.com/clie...regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1735583
"Frontier is close to bankruptcy": very overstated - they have enough cash saved in the bank to survive the next two years at least even if things don't improve. They're not in good shape and can't keep making losses on the scale of the recent years, but they have time to turn things around from reserves established in the good years. https://otp.tools.investis.com/clie...regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1726162
"Frontier are laying people off": a restructuring and redundancies programme was again announced recently as part of their attempts to stop making losses. (same link as third item)
Their investor presentations at https://www.frontier.co.uk/investors/ and accounts at https://www.frontier.co.uk/investors/annual-and-interim-reports provide more details, but in summary of recent years
- FY22: profit 6.7 million
- FY23: loss 4.6 million
- FY24: expected loss 9 million (half-year results are likely to be published in a couple of weeks)
- FY25: after redundancies and other measures they hope to return to break-even
Or we might have had exactly the same game we currently have, except without the financial cushion from their really big successes (the Jurassic World and Planet Coaster/Zoo games have all brought in similar income to Elite Dangerous on much lower costs) meaning that Odyssey's losses could be absorbed without seriously damaging the company, rather than putting it into a "well now what do we do?" crisis.
They've spent more money on Elite Dangerous in the last decade than on any two or three of their other games combined (around £70 million). In return for that, they've got about as much income (£127 million) as any one of their Management Sim games ... but taken twice as long to get that income. Profitable, definitely, but hardly the massive hit of JWE(2) or Planet Zoo.
One thing Frontier cannot reasonably be accused of is "insufficient commitment to Elite Dangerous".
(Their shareholders might suggest "insufficient commitment to Management Sims" but fortunately no-one listens to them)
And what the point of it at all then? I would expect real modelling when I toss the modules in simulator. In fact that would be 1st I try. If it does not change visually, ok, I'm done with that
You only need one unique ship model per ship to hold and act as a hub for all the interchangeable/modular components that can be put inside it. Think of modules as the basic tiles in a map/level editor. The ship editor in Starfield has already been citied as an example; it's a bit janky, but there are countless permutations of ships possible from a handful of basic modules...and still would be, even if the basic layouts were fixed.
Even in Elite different configurations would be functionally and visually, different--a door leading to passenger cabins on one Anaconda may be blocked off and have a fuel tank, or an unpressurized void, behind it on another--but the basic layout of the core components would always be the same (matching the locations they can currently be targeted in). The bridge will always be in the same spot. Engineering will always be on the same deck...though it may look a little silly on a ship with a severely undersized power plant, etc and so forth.
The point would be to do the bulk of those things that one imagines would could do on their own ship, level of detail permitting. Stupid selfies, holding stacks of garbage looted from planets, running around tazering access panels or swapping power regulators to approximate repairs (or sabotage), plunging the toilets, trying to find stowaways before they fisticuffs the hull to zero percent when hiding in the bilge, keeping the tribbles out of the grain canisters, making sure disgruntled passengers don't commandeer the ship or poop in the SLFs, seeing what's actually in those leathery eggs, or just spending three minutes walking to the aft cargo hatch or SRV bay instead of doing it automatically. Bonus points for getting killed by falling damage when trying to use the Cutter's stairs on a high-g world.
Once again thanks Ian. What do you make of the non exec directors and their tecent purchases
over the Christmas break.i spent 5 minutes searching and thats the maximum im willing to do for you. couldnt find it.
wasnt there in a fairly recent update a list of issues that were dismissed from the tracker as unresolved? am i living through a mandela effect? id swear its either 16 or 17
if im wrong im sorry.
Point 'em at something like https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/issue-tracker-planetary-tiling.602191/ - though they'll just argue. Like you I'm sure there were others, but really they should be trying to keep up with the game themselves.i spent 5 minutes searching and thats the maximum im willing to do for you. couldnt find it.
wasnt there in a fairly recent update a list of issues that were dismissed from the tracker as unresolved? am i living through a mandela effect? id swear its either 16 or 17
I dont agree with that. Elite is kind of game thats if not entire dev manpower frontier has not focus on, it will be insufficent in longer terms, and thats what exacly did happen.
Oddy was disaster exacly for reasons stated below... simply not enough manpower focused on one thing within limited timeframe, but rather scattered all over diffrent projects. That the one big problem of elite, among of many others.
Fair enough, from purely financal perspective... but also thats the problem... even if other thier games where cheaper to produce and yielded them better income, state of preety much most of patches elite got since horizons, leave lot to be desired...wich obviously because Elite lacks enough manpower due of its sheer scale. With each new game they annouced since lauch of elite, they not really expanded enough to keep quality of elite without intact, so quality of patches, well as how often they are relased, droped, year by year.
Time had passed, so some ppl left, some passed away (rip M.B.) and new ppl who came after them, tasked with elite within frontier - they dont seems understood the code anymore (who would teach them if there only few who created it probly left/gone or doing entirely diffrent projects?), wich obviously shows in quality, as quality of recent patches are at thier lowest point ever. It feels like they dont know anymore what they are doing.
Enough to be not sued for not deliver what they promised at first - to later leave out many of promises... But a lot of other companies (game or not) did similar and got away with it, so they as well. They just taken an easy path - that much is obvious, just grab money at time, and predend it will be good "soon".
That being said - buggy mess and low quality looks more like "insufficient commitment to Elite Dangerous" than anything else. Somewhat some smaller studios that focus on single games, still are able to keep deliver content to thier games, with lower costs, and with much better quality... like Egosoft (X series) did with thier games for example.
Again, amount of time and commitment, they did indeed needed to put into any other game they relased, despite if it was sucessfull or not on its own end, taken much needed time elite needed to not be buggy mess like its now. I can tell because Ive been playin this game since its relase, and cant help but notice drop in quality, wich only stated to surface when they expanded (after horizons).... surely its not mere coincidence.
There is noticable lack of passion, whenever I see devs vids about it (not mentioning diffrent cast of devs each year), those ppl certainly dont look like passionate about thier game, atleast in my eyes. Just another average persons who will left company soon as they got bit of experience in thier jobs to get a better one. And all these things reflect directly on game itself. Its sad but true.
Two different subjects. 1. avoiding walking to the elevator. 2. why would anyone want ship interiors.just relog and call for more immersion in one post ^^ though saying you can just relog does feel to me kinda like you can go play other games for ship interiors
no beef, just funny...
If they expect to return to profitability then buying their own stock while it's hopefully at its cheapest is a pretty obvious move. Hopefully they're right.Once again thanks Ian. What do you make of the non exec directors and their tecent purchases
Certainly there are a bunch of high-profile bugs which they decided weren't fixable for one reason or another over the last couple of years. If you sort https://issues.frontierstore.net/reported-issues/elite-dangerous by "Top voted" then you should find most of them ... https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/new-launcher-issue-tracker-updates-and-more.618568/ may be the thread you're thinking of.
That said, I think they're mostly right about these closures: they're generally either of things which aren't bugs as such, or of reports which are so broad that they could bring out big improvements in that area for every release for a year and still not fix the entire thing. That's not to say that there aren't issues related to anti-aliasing or performance or planetary features - just that a catch-all "it doesn't work very well" bug isn't particularly useful for fixing.
Previous to Horizons starting they'd had the dubiously-designed Powerplay, the "missing half the key features of an arena shooter" CQC, and even pre-release Offlinegate, as well as a wide range of bugs, balance issues and forum complaints about a wide things being "minimum-effort placeholders" ... and instancing with even your wingmates was a 50-50 chance at best.
I had fun in 1.x, of course - I recall running away from your Cutter at a CG once - but a lot of the quality issues only got fixed up in the later parts of Horizons (let's not mention Multicrew) and in the early Beyond patches, and I really wouldn't want to go back to playing that version. There's never been a golden age for quality.
I didn't play that version of the Skyrim, but I heard some combinations aren't valid there. That has sense. However in Elite we have valid "invalid" combinations. SLF placement, as example. There is 1 big enough exit in the hull. So 1. vehicle should be above it. 2. it cannot be 2 vehicles (slf + srv). And just this makes big chunk of ship's design "invalid" for interiors. I'm sure we could find much more, like fuel tanks everywhere. Or cargo racks everywhere without access to the entry, etc.
Sure we can just put modules as "gaming convention". But what the point then? This game is simulator and I expect accurate simulating from it.
Last edited:
I think I had most fun was 1.0 - 1.3 era, wich was the very first year. There was hope (later to be only dissapointed), exploration was at its best, I mean all "low hangin fruits" was up to grabs (preety much anywhere one would went - truly felt like being somewhere no one been before) well as most stunning background Ive ever seen in game was not permit locked (horsehead). Also in combat (PVP/PVE) skill was way more important than ship loadout. Credits did actually meant something at time, and high maintence costs required to actually think a bit, before doing anything. Ceos/sothis illegal cargo runs that failed at scan, also worth is to mention... All of it, had its charm... litte of that remain today, and things where indeed diffrent, almost like completly diffrent game.
Lastly, and most important as well, game had regular updates every few weeks, we had roadplan, there was comunication with devs, the hope... Things that current elite lacks, sadly.
That was litte bit later on, but still those were good old times. I think I grabed that ship not long before horizons. And it was like more than year after day one.
I'd argue that these few issues are just as much issues without ship interiors as with them and should be corrected with or without ship interiors. Correcting them is also not anywhere near the largest barrier to ship interiors.
i spent 5 minutes searching and thats the maximum im willing to do for you. couldnt find it.
wasnt there in a fairly recent update a list of issues that were dismissed from the tracker as unresolved? am i living through a mandela effect? id swear its either 16 or 17
That's ok, but I'm not asking anything more than for you to back up what you asserted so let's keep it clear about on who's shoulders that responsibility lay.
I wondered if that was part of it, however the decision was based on cost and development time, not "unresovable" as OP asserted:
Not sure if what you are saying is in reference to me but I'll say in general that I'm reasonably confident that I'm 'keeping up with the game' to question OPs blanket assertion about 'unresolvable' issues that would primarily insinuate that they are technical in nature. This isn't a discussion about server meshing or persistant entity streaming here, though funnily enough it went pretty quiet about planetary tiling when some juicy examples of it were found in that unfinished singular "handcrafted" system compared to the 400billion systems where such features could crop up. Similar to how the derision of the zoom for scope quickly evaporated when it turned out that's exactly how SC does it too. I'm keeping up, and while I'm dubious about Frontier saying there were 'unresolvable' problems with Elite, I would happily accept OP pulling up the reciepts that showed it.
Last edited:
My opinion, for what it's worth goes something like this: Kid to parent 'I wanna bunny rabbit, I wanna bunny rabbit, I wanna a bunny rabbit. Gets given a toy rabbit. Kid takes rabbit. Throws on floor. I wanna bunny
rabbit. Enjoy what you have!
I dont feel any 'responsibility' or 'obligation' to look up things for you. I admitted i could be wrong and apologized, but seems like there were some unresolvable bugs somewhere in the posts after all huh. You feel that 'unresolvable indicates technical problem', i think unresolvable means problem that wasnt (and most probably will not be) resolved, for whatever reason. Cos as a player i really dont care in the end what the reason for not resolving is.
Imo what it boils down to is
I know there are unresolved bugs.
You know there are unresolved bugs.
Fdev (hopefuly) knows there are unresolved bugs.
If you want to haggle over impressions and feelings go ahead for all i care.
And dont get me wrong, im not blaming devs, im not saying there is no work done on elite (there was no small amount of bugs fixed just last year), im not saying the job is easy or anything like that. I have only the utmost respect for everyone doing a good job and i am very thankful for them.
But the game is old and feels and looks and behaves funcionally as a weasley house from harry potter. Just patches and addons and patches held together by magic. When i have to relog for.my cargo to appear and relog in the middle of ody mission cos some item didnt spawn and then softlock on the concourse terminal and then cant plot a course to my carrier as it plots to random location and then im sent to rebuy from ground cz because the cz didnt load when i got tgere with frontlines...
... then i really dont care for ship interiors.
I think Super Mario 64 was built as a 3D game from the ground. 3D wasn't added later to an existing 2D game.